ladyscientist: Sharing is Nice

October 27, 2004

Sharing is Nice

One of the things we hope that our monthly meetings and this website achieve is the sharing of news and information relevant to women in science. I regularly receive interesting articles from friends and colleagues in the department. What follows are links to several of these articles. I'll continue to post them and readers are welcome to add directions to sites or articles of interest that they'd like to share by clicking on the Comments link below.

Inspiring Women
The 2004 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine was shared by American researcher Linda Buck and Richard Axel for their work on the sense of smell. The Nobel Prize website has a video of Linda's Nobel lecture.

For the first time in its 142 year history a woman was named president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Click here to read a short article about MIT's first female president, neurobiologist Susan Hockfield.

Workplace
This short article discusses the decreasing offers of tenure to women in the Faculty of Arts and Science at Harvard. (scroll to bottom half of page)

For the present and future postdocs, an article entitled "The Evolution of Postdocs" describes the changes over the years of the postdoctoral experience regarding independence and funding.

For the Future
The Women Investigators Network (WIN) is a new initiative launched by the New York Academy of Sciences. The Academy recently called together women investigators from academia, industry, and the public service sector. The focus group "advised the Academy on what role it could play to help break down the remaining barriers to women studying and working in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM)". Read about their results and recommendations at the NYAS website.

Posted by Susan at October 27, 2004 12:19 AM

Comments

I have found the discussions very interesting and enjoyed listening to the experiences that the speakers have had during their academic career. In the future, is it possible to speak with someone in academia who opted not to have children, someone who chose to go into industry instead or even men who might have insight into the issue?

Posted by: at October 29, 2004 01:58 PM

Definitely. We're open to inviting men and women from various science-related professions in order to explore different perspectives and broaden the scope of these meetings. We may also try having workshop-style meetings (e.g. building assertiveness skills).

If anyone has suggestions for workshops or guests they'd like to see in the future, please feel free to post them here, or e-mail me at info@ladyscientist.com.

Posted by: Susan at October 31, 2004 09:16 PM